Film: It’s hard to do a review of a remake of a film that has iconic scenes with iconic horrors stars in it. More to the point, it’s hard to do a review of a remake of an 80s horror film that has so many things that make it stand head and shoulders above other smaller budgeted films of the same decade. The ‘lipstick in the nipple’ scene, the ‘bending over in the convenience store’ scene, the atrocious ‘acting’ by Linnea Quigley… actually, in summary, it’s EVERY scene in which Quigley appears!!

It must have been a daunting task for remake director Adam Gierasch to attempt to follow in 80s version director Kevin Tenney’s footsteps, but soldier on he did. As always the key to doing a remake is to take the originals scenes, and turn the violence volume up on them to a Spinal Tap-like 11, but how does one do that when the original has scenes that a SO well remembered for their absolute craziness.

Anyway, the story tells of Angela (Shannon Elizabeth), a club/party promoter who has organised a kick-arse party in a house when 85 years ago, some murders took place, and the house has been shrouded in mystery ever since.

A bunch of Angela’s friends come to the party, but the police shut it down due to the appropriate approvals not being present. Unfortunately, a bunch of them, including drug dealer Colin (Edward Furlong), Jason (John F. Beach), Dex (Michael Copon), Lily (Diora Baird), Maddie (Monica Keena) and Suzanne (Bobbi Sue Luther) get stuck in the building, and after one of them in ‘bitten’ by a dead body in the basement, slowly, one-by-one, they get turned into demons cast out of Hell, but will any of them survive… and will you, the viewer, even care?

Pretty much well everything about this film can be used as an argument AGAINST the concept of remakes being OK, but if I was to be forced into offering this film any sort of compliment, one of the demon designs (the one who has prehensile tit tentacles… titacles?) is pretty inventive, but other than that, this film is like a poor pisstake of the film GO! but with demons in it. The worst crime this commits is that it sets up ideas in the script that are interesting, that don’t pay off, and are just their because, for example, London gangsters are hot right now, let’s have one!

To add insult to injury, the songs on the soundtrack are pretty terrible and emulate sounds from actual big heavy metal songs… one in particular steals so liberally from one of Rob Zombie’s songs that I can’t believe they weren’t sued by him.

When a film is only remembered for Quigley reprising a visual take on her original role, and Edward Furlong looking like a hobo, you know it’s got issues.

Score: *

Format: This film was reviewed with the Australian Region 4 DVD which runs for approximately 93 minutes (though it feels like SO much longer) and is presented in an average looking and sounding 16×9 widescreen image with a 2.0 audio track.

Score: **

Extras: This film thinks it’s far too good for you and offers you NOTHING in the form of extras!

Score: 0

WISIA: This is one of those cases where the original is so crackers that the remake will never be remembered! I won’t watch this again, not while the original exists.

Film: Another day, another ‘Day’. It seems that a lot of Hollywood need to feed from the undead teat of the late George Romero, and if they screw it up, they give someone else a go. The Night of the Dead remake by Tom Savini was a decent watch, Zack Snyder’s remake of Dawn of the Dead was suitable impressive too, even though it was more of an action film with dead people than a horror film with a message like Romero’s, but remakes of Day have constantly screwed up.

Horror legend Steve Miner’s heart may have been in the right place… in his chest, not on a plate… when he remade Romero’s Day Of The Dead, but it just fell a little short with some odd casting, like Mena Suvari, and Ving Rhames, but playing a different character from that which he played in the Dawn remake… confusing! Next we had Day of the Dead 2: Contagion and here we… actually no, the wounds are still too fresh, even after 13 years… and now we have a brand new, 2018 remake, Day of the Dead Bloodline, with a script by Hush’s Mark Tonderai and Baby Blues’ Lars Jacobson, and directed by The Corpse Of Anna Fritz’s writer/ director Hèctor Hernández Vicens.

The Dead walk, and mankind is screwed! You know the story: when there is no more room in Heck, the Dead walk the earth when something fell from space or something, and mankind is in some deep doodoo.

It’s 5 years latter Day Z, and medical student Zoe (Sophie Skelton) is now one of the medical personnel at a military run refugee camp, filled with army personnel, as well as families. One of the children at the camp gets a strain of influenza that desperately needs anti-biotics that she knows is at the University facility where she was five years ago, so of course, she and a bunch of muscle-bound army men travel off to retrieve it.

The problem is though, when they get there, the place has a small zombie problem, and particularly for Zoe, a creepy dude, who was obsessed with Zoe and had a strange and rare blood type, named Max (Johnathon Schaech) is still residing there. Now, though, he’s a zombie, and due to his weird blood type, he only half-turned and still retains some memory or being alive.

Well, this is the assumption, anyway…

Of course, he is intelligent enough to find a way to break into the facility, and when captured, Zoe convinces Lt. Salazar (Jeff Gum), the boss of the refuge that he may be the key to creating a vaccine to protect mankind from become ‘rotters’ (this film’s word for zombies) and she starts her experiments… but will the refuge survive?

So how bad is this? Well, it’s not. It’s interesting insomuch as there is a real proactive movement towards creating an inoculation which is an interesting aspect to the zombie breakout idea, which yes, has been done before but if you overlook some of the stupid script bits and pieces as a few moments of emotional melodrama, it’s actually works.

Schaech does his rapist freak Bub impression just fine, and Gum’s wound-back version of Captain Rhodes actually works far better as he at no time really becomes a caricature like Joe Plato’s did. The army aren’t the enemy here, they are here to protect us,

The zombies all look pretty good too, and the special effects are of a pretty good quality, but there is one problem with the film.

You can definitely tell this isn’t Romero’s Dead World is it all looks new. The story tells us it’s 5 years after the Dead first came back, but everything: the military vehicles, the guns, the uniforms, all look like they were unpacked yesterday. Also, even though supplies are getting thin, everyone at the refugee camp looks like a catalogue model: clean skin, even tan, manicured beard/ hair… thank Revlon a decent hairdresser/ waxer survived the zombie apocalypse.

This is where the suspension of disbelief gene that all movie fans have, fails. I don’t like comparing originals to remakes, but the grit and filth of the facility in the abandoned mine in the original gave a sense of realism, whereas even though the zombies look fine in this, it’s all Ikea fresh. Even the abandoned towns don’t look TOO abandoned, and a little like a movie set.

This is an Ok zombie film, and is more like a sequel to the Snyder Dawn with its slick presentation. I’ve actually seen many worse zombie films than this, and two of them were also called Day of the Dead.

Score: ***

Format: Day of the Dead: Bloodline runs for approximately 90 minutes, and this review was performed on the Australian, region B Bluray which has a perfect 2.35:1 image and an DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 of matching quality.

Score: *****

Extras: There is a single extra on this disc called Behind the Scenes is a 5 minutes fluff pieces which pays homage to Romero’s original work, but quickly turns into a self-congratulatory thing. Interesting one of the producers says ‘we are not trying to replace Romero’… so why not call your film ‘Military Hospital Of The Dead’ or ‘Blood Type Z’ or something.

Score: **

WISIA: Aside from how stupidly new it looks, it’s good enough to watch again, even though the end may be a little… well, really schmaltzy, but it’s certainly a different ending for a zombie film, that’s for sure.

Film: The early 2000s were a wonderful time when every second movie that was released was a remake, not like now when every movie is a Disney film, and every forum on the Internet was rife with old school horror lovers screaming blue murder that a remake would wreck ‘their’ film.

Here’s a few pointers:

-a remake doesn’t wreck an original film…in actual fact it does nothing to it other than bring attention to it.

– it’s not ‘your’ film, and the owners of the rights can do whatever they feel like to it. You are just playing in their backyard.

Anyway, this remake was directed by French director Alexandre Aja, whose previous film was the unusual, and violent psychological film Haute Tension aka High Tension which many people were stunned by both for its extreme gore, and is use of trickery, and blatant lies to tell its tale. The script, whilst based on Wes Craven’s original film, is written by Gregory Levasseur, who also worked on Haute Tension and Aja’s next film, Mirrors.

The Hills Have Eyes remake tells of a family who are travelling across the New Mexico desert on holiday. When the father, Big Bob (Ted Levine) is told of a short cut not on the map by a gas station attendant of dubious moral, he proves he must have never seen a horror movie a decides to take it.

Part of the way across this ‘short cut’ the family are in a accident staged by a bunch of mutants who live in the mines in the hills, and in the governmental built town made to see how nuclear weapons would effect suburbs. These mutants are the results of the fallout subjected their ancestors.

Quickly, the family are subjected to murder, rape and cannibalism before one of them steps up his game and decides to set things straight, and carves a path of blood and guts across the desert.

Aja proves that his Haute Tension film was not a fluke, and this, his first American film, sits high on my list of amazing remakes, along with John Carpenter’s The Thing and Chuck Russell’s The Blob. Aja has taken Craven’s film and really increased the levels of every threat the family encounter.

A special shout-out has to go to the effects, which to me are a seamless combination of CGI and practical effects, and the soundtrack, not just the incidental music but also the bizarre choices of songs for the opening and closing credits, particularly the opening which is combined with 1950s styled happy-housemaker adverts and deformities of the children of people who were exposed to Agent Orange in Viet Nam.

There is a lot to love about this film and dare I say it, I like it far more than the original.

Score: ****

Format: This film was reviewed with the Australian, region B Bluray release of the film, which is presentin a crystal clear 2.35:1 image and a matching Dolby DTS-HD 5.1 audio track.

Score: *****

Extras: There is a few extras on here which are a pain to access as the disc has no menu screen, so whilst the film is playing you have to use your ‘Pop-up Menu’ button to access them.

There are two commentaries, one by Aja, writer Levassuer and Producer Marianne Maddalena and another by Producers Peter Locke and horror legend Wes Craven. Either individually or watched one after the other they offer a whole pile of interesting anecdotes of the making of the film.

There are 7 Production diaries which can be watched individually or as a job lot. They are crappy handicap filmed behind the scenes stuff with no offer of an explanation throughout and each one only goes for about two minutes. Ultimately worthless.

We also have trailers for this film, From Hell and X-men: The Last Stand.